


if you ever catch your breath

by Vorpal_Sword



Series: the soft animal of your body [6]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials Fusion, Buried Alive, Canon-Typical Violence, Claustrophobia, Daemons, Episode: S04e07 The Grave Danger Job, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:28:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22605502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vorpal_Sword/pseuds/Vorpal_Sword
Summary: Alec and his daemon wake up in the dark.Or, The Grave Danger Job, with daemons.
Series: the soft animal of your body [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1483046
Comments: 44
Kudos: 177





	1. catch your breath

**Author's Note:**

> This story deals with Hardison's experience with and recovery from getting buried alive. 
> 
> Title from Hook Line, by Andrea Gibson:
> 
> There are stars in your dark side  
> brighter than the sun.
> 
> Promise me, if you ever catch your breath  
> you will throw it back out to sea immediately.

Alec wakes up slowly. He has a pounding headache and a vague sense of doom that immediately morphs into a far less vague sense of panic as soon as he registers that a) he has no idea where he is and b) he has no idea how he got there. He can’t sit up, can’t stretch out, and something heavy is sitting on his ankles.

“Leia?” he whimpers. “Leia!” His daemon doesn’t answer, though he knows she must be close.

A phone rings and he grasps at it, the faint blue light filling the tiny room. 

“Wakey, wakey,” says Javier. His voice triggers Alec's memories. The crew had (well, really, _Alec_ had) created fake documents to con a crooked funeral director in her identity theft scam, but the drug dealer she was selling them to went rogue, kidnapping Alec to force Nate to hand them over without paying. It's the goddamn _Iceman_ all over again. They’d done such a good job convincing the mark of their abilities that her partner-in-crime went straight to the source, and here’s Alec again, paying the price. 

(Where his own partners-in-crime are, and if they are all okay, is a question Alec is trying not to think about).

He remembers Brigid's furious bark cutting off abruptly as they knocked Nate out. He remembers Leia hissing and clawing at the kidnapper’s Doberman, how she’d gone limp entirely when she saw the gun to Alec’s temple, just before everything went black. 

He asks, “Where am I? Where’s my daemon?” It’s no use keeping the panic out of his voice.

“Well, see for yourself,” Javier answers, and Alec lifts his head. There’s something familiar about this satin, the way it folds. Alec brushes his hand against the wall and it clicks. He’s felt this before. Yesterday, in fact. He can't avoid the realization. 

He’s in a coffin. 

He’s in _Darlene’s_ coffin, the one she’d made him admire. 

Alec screams.

Javier continues, “Your daemon is at your feet, kid, she’s fine. I can’t say she’ll stay that way, but, well, that depends on you.” Alec blinks rapidly, tries to focus. “Listen up, 'cause I'm only gonna say this once. You use this phone to call your friend. Tell him to bring the identity documents to the baseball diamond on the corner of Sycamore and 3rd. You tell him to place the envelope under home base. Once I have the documents…then we can talk. That is, if you're still alive.”

The phone clicks off. It only takes Alec a moment to recognize the practically ancient model. No GPS, no internet. No software he can spoof. The weight on his legs is his daemon, warm but not moving. He takes a deep breath and instantly wishes he hadn’t. 

He’s already used up too much air. 

Okay, he’s going to be okay, he can do this. Spider-Man survived being buried alive, Alec can too. Even if he doesn’t have the proportionate strength of a spider. He has something better.

He has the best damn crew in the world. 

From memory, he dials eleven digits, and waits for Parker to pick up. 

Leia regains consciousness just in time to hear Eliot conclude that they must be buried in a cemetery. She snarls as Alec's terror hits her, but she’s always been quicker on the uptake than he is. 

“Well, fuck,” she says. 

“Is that Leia?” Eliot asks, sharp. “Thank God. Both of you, we need your help tracking. Can you smell anything, hear anything, any pressure in your ears?”

“Wait,” Also Parker interrupts, urgent. Alec can hear the dragonfly’s wings buzzing next to the phone speaker. “Let Leia talk, raccoon-lungs will use less air.” 

Alec hits the speaker button on the phone with trembling hands and holds it towards his daemon.

“Water,” Leia says, and now Alec hears it too, water all around them. For a moment, he’s sure the water will seep into the coffin, filling it up. They’ve had nightmares of drowning since D.C., since Moreau. He thinks he can feel it dripping onto his face. His whole being focuses on the rush of the water around them. Then the sound stops and Alec can think again.

“It just stopped,” Leia says. “Like a switch.”

“Sprinklers,” Eliot infers. “He ain’t that deep.” Underneath Alec’s irritation at being talked about like he’s not there is a warmer feeling, something like hope. That’s Eliot’s retrieval specialist voice. It’s the same tone he’d used at the carnival just last week before rescuing that Molly kid. His big damn hero voice. 

_They’ll find us,_ he promises Leia. She doesn’t say anything, just clambers up his body as well as she can. It’s too tight a squeeze to get all the way up, but she reaches a paw up to rest on his heart.

Over the phone, he can hear his team hurrying, the faint sound of sirens. He thinks about four criminals willing to deliberately piss off some cops just to help find him. He thinks about Nana, telling him that what a person prioritizes shows you where their heart lies more than anything they say. She'd been warning him about partners who tell you they love you but always choose something else over you, but now, lying in a grave that could very well become _his_ grave, Alec realizes that it goes the other way, too. His team might hassle him about his geekiness, his affectations, his phobias, but every one of them is putting their freedom at risk to save his life. They care about him, even if none of them would go with him to see the upcoming Avengers movie in full cosplay like he planned to do with his sisters.

 _Plans,_ he tells himself sternly. _Plans, present tense._ He has every intention of surviving this. But he can't keep himself from imagining his sisters at a premier without him, not because he cancelled last minute because he’s the unreliable one with the mysterious job he can’t talk about but because he’s dead. If they were mourning him, would it be too painful for them to go at all or would they go in his honor? The breath catches in his throat. He’ll never get to see Keisha’s latest Iron Man costume, or hear Jess gushing over Samuel L. Jackson. He’s going to die here, suffocating underground, and his sisters won’t ever understand why. They won’t even recognize his team, his other family, at the funeral. 

And that’s a whole other line of thinking he can’t handle: Parker and Eliot and Nate and Sophie at his funeral, Parker begging for it all to be a con again like it was with Sophie but unable to pretend with Leia missing. His Leia, missing. His Leia, a pile of Dust left on this goddamn satin. He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe. 

“Alec!” Leia hisses. She starts to claw at the fabric, tearing the satin to pieces. Now, when they’re about to die, she’s acting like those rabid raccoons Nana hated, that tore up the curtains and left trash everywhere. Alec feels a hysterical giggle bursting out of his throat.

“Parker!” Leia pleads. “Parker, are you there?” 

“Hardison?” Parker says. Her voice is shaky. There’s a rustling he can’t make out, Parker talking to someone else. 

“P-Parker?” 

“Okay, Hardison, we need you to calm down. Listen to us.” 

Leia stills. They both listen to the tinny voice coming from the small phone. At least one thing can be said for these older models, Alec thinks. They’ve got decent battery life.

“Okay, take a deep breath in,” Parker instructs. Both Alec and his daemon obey. “Okay, good, now let it out.” Alec does. He can feel Leia nuzzle close on his chest as he releases the precious air. His ears are wet from the tears dripping down his temples, and somehow it seems like the worst thing that he can’t even reach up properly to wipe them away. As Parker continues coaching him, he feels some of the panic recede. His team is coming. 

“Parker, don’t, don’t get off the phone again?” he begs. 

“We’re not getting off this phone until we get you out of there,” she promises. It’s in stereo, Parker and her daemon speaking together the way they do occasionally, whenever they are most emotional. 

_I’m here,_ Leia assures him. Her weight, which has always been a comfort, is now as stressful as it is comforting. He feels pinned down, like she's keeping him immobile, though he knows that she is not what is preventing him from sitting up.

She squeaks in distress as she registers his thought and tries to move away but there’s nowhere to go that isn’t putting weight on him. She keeps answering Parker’s questions while Alec tries to focus on his breathing. 

“I hear something!” Leia gasps. “Sirens, Parker, I hear sirens!” 

“Ambulance or police car?” Parker asks, urgent as, well, as a siren. 

“Ambulance! Ambulance!” 

“He’s here!” Parker exclaims, and Alec reaches to squeeze his daemon’s paw. Parker is here. Parker will not let them suffocate. 

It’s reassuring until they hear another distinctive sound. _Gunshot,_ Alec and Leia think together, and they stare at each other in the dark. 

_I’ve killed them_ , Alec thinks bleakly. _They came to rescue me and I got them shot._

“Hardison,” Parker says. Alec focuses on her voice. As long as he can hear her, she isn’t dead, and neither is he. 

There’s a howl above them and Leia sits up so fast she bumps her head on the top of the coffin and bounces back down against his chest. “Boudicca,” she breathes. “Parker, I hear Boudicca, are you…”

“We’re right above you,” Parker confirms. “Boudicca says you have a very distinctive smell.” 

Now Alec can hear some scraping, a discordant thudding. Shovels, just above him. 

There are more gunshots and the digging stops. “Parker?” Leia says. Alec can no longer muster the air to speak. He prays wordlessly, just a desperate plea that if he has to go, it will not be listening to his...his people getting shot above him. 

“Hardison, if you can hear me, take a deep breath and hold it as long as you can.” It’s Parker-the-dragonfly. He can hear human-Parker gasping with exertion. For a twisted moment, Alec envies her the ability to breathe even as he knows she's literally dodging bullets.

“I know you can do this,” the dragonfly continues. “You have to make it through this.”

Leia says, _I love you, Alec. I’m sorry._ She can’t breathe anymore, either.

“You have to make it through this,” Parker repeats. “Because… because you’re my friend, and I need you. Do you hear me, Alec? I need you!” 

_I love you_ , Alec thinks, and he’s not sure if he means Leia, or Parker, or Nana, or, well, life. 

There’s another howl above them. Parker orders, “Hardison, move to your left!” He obeys. A moment later, a bullet slams through the coffin. 

Alec breathes in deeply, blinking at the dizzying onrush of light and air, and thinks that he’d never expected to be so damn grateful to be shot at. 

There’s another loud clatter above him. Everything jolts, and he finds himself squinting into the bright sunlight, blinding after the cramped darkness of the coffin. There are hands on his shoulders, on his back, tugging him up and into a tight embrace. It’s Eliot, Eliot and Nate. 

Nate says, “Hey, welcome back to the land of the living.” There’s a surge of joy coming from Leia as she nuzzles at Boudicca while the wolfdog cleans her off, checking every inch of her fur for injuries. Mel trills from above them. 

“Never do that again, man,” Eliot orders. “Don’t do that again.” The last time Alec heard Eliot sound that raw, Damien Moreau was involved. 

“Cool, I won’t,” Alec promises, breathless now for much more positive reasons. As his eyes adjust, he sees Brigid keeping watch, making sure they can have this reunion in peace. He reaches to hug Nate.

“All right,” Nate says, gruff and uncomfortable, but Alec sees the tension go out of Brigid’s back.

Then Sophie is there, reaching for her hug. Nana isn’t here and God willing Nana will never know what went down today, but Sophie makes a pretty good substitute. 

_Parker._ Leia says the name like a prayer. It’s part plea, part thanksgiving. Alec follows his daemon’s gaze to see Parker standing several feet away. She’s staring at him with both sets of eyes, the dragonfly bobbing up and down next to her ear. He can’t remember seeing either of them ever look this unsteady. They look at each other for a long moment. 

She walks away, and Alec watches her go. He knows, now, that Parker needs breaks sometimes, but she will come back. He takes a deep breath. It smells of grass and dirt. He lets it out. 

Leia leans against his leg. Together, Alec and his daemon look into the clean blue air and breathe.

They breathe.


	2. throw it back

Alec and Leia find Parker sitting on the bar, twisting the useless burner phone in her hands. Alec would be just as happy to never see that thing again but he knows they deal with trauma differently. For her, he supposes, having the phone is a reminder that she succeeded, that he is safe now, that he didn’t need it to speak to her anymore.

Not that he has any idea what there is to say to her. Now that he's looking at her, everything he'd planned to say seems trite, awkward, insufficient. He can generate synonyms like a damn thesaurus but can't find the words to tell Parker even a fraction of what he wants her to know.

Leia has no such compunctions. She leaps from floor to stool to counter and stops almost but not quite _touching_ Parker’s arm, right by where Also Parker is perched. “We never would have made it through that without you. You know that, right, Parker?” She brushes one paw very gently against the dragonfly’s thorax, just for a second. 

Parker shrugs with both bodies. The dragonfly says, “Oh, that’s not true. Anyone can learn to hold their breath.” 

Alec finds that he has something to say, after all. He leans in slowly, telegraphing the move as obviously as he can. If Parker is uncomfortable, she has ample time to dodge away. Or stab him with a fork. 

She does neither. He kisses her cheek, savoring the warmth of her skin next to his. “Thanks for not hanging up the phone,” he breathes. 

“Yeah,” Parker says.

Leia latches onto Alec’s arm and clambers up to perch on his shoulders. They pause in the doorway to look back. Also Parker has moved to Parker's palm, replacing the now-discarded burner phone. Parker watches them leave and smiles at them through her tears. 

It’s over, but it isn’t _over_ over. Alec’s vengeance may be in motion, but he still has enough nightmares of Moreau to know that the removal of the threat doesn’t make the terror go away. 

Leia has a minor panic attack in the stairwell. By the time Alec stumbles to the light switch, she’s torn a long rip in his t-shirt and scratched his chest. She throws herself off him as soon as she registers his pain, and they both gasp as she hits the floor hard.

“I hurt you Alec I hurt you I’m so sorry,” she wails. 

“Baby, I’m fine, we’re both fine,” he says, though they both know that is barely even _superficially_ true.

She looks at him miserably and turns to clamber up the stairs, forcing him to follow. She comes to an abrupt halt outside their door. Alec, just behind her, tenses as he realizes why she stopped— there’s an audible clattering coming from inside the apartment. He looks at his daemon warily, expecting to see her freaking out again. Instead her ears perk up and a certain stiffness disappears from her posture. “Eliot,” she explains briefly, and noses apologetically at his knee. “Sorry for overreacting like that.”

He reaches down to scratch her ears. “I understand, love, there isn't anything to forgive.” He swings the door open and discovers a whole new reason to relish breathing deeply— The apartment smells wonderful. 

“Hey, Hardison,” Eliot calls from the kitchen. 

“Wasn’t expecting you to be here,” Alec says.

Eliot snorts. Boudicca says, “Like we’d leave you alone tonight, c’mon.” Eliot gives his daemon a look, probably because she said too much, maybe because she’d spoken at all, but the wolfdog ignores him in favor of grooming Leia. Alec can feel Leia’s anxiety recede with every nuzzle from the other daemon. 

“Dinner will be ready in about half an hour but it can wait if you need longer,” Eliot says as he zests an orange.

Alec hesitates. He’d like to call Nana, but there’s too much he can’t explain, and he’s never been able to lie to her, especially not as worn out as he is today. He just… really wants a reminder that all his people are okay. 

_Jess and Sam_ , Leia suggests. It’s a good idea. “Gonna call my sister,” he tells Eliot, and texts Jess to see if she’s available.

A moment later, he jumps in surprise as his phone rings. 

“What’s up, Alec?” his sister says.

He takes a deep breath, appreciating the sensation of his lungs filling up. “I had… a rough day.” Over by the stove, Eliot doubles over coughing at the understatement.

Jess sighs. “I’ll assume you’ve taken my usual disclaimer about how I am not and cannot be _your_ therapist as a given?” Alec makes an assenting noise. “Okay, hun, what’s up?”

Alec gives her a highly sanitized version of the day’s events. He leaves out what, exactly, they were doing that pissed off Javier and co. He says he was being held hostage to his team’s cooperation, but doesn’t explain what they were supposed to cooperate with. He says that he was confined in a dark, cramped, space, that it triggered his claustrophobia something fierce, that he was afraid they would kill him, that his team rescued him and he’s physically unharmed. He leaves out that he was _buried alive in a damn coffin in a freaking cemetery_ , that he nearly asphyxiated, that the rescue involved stealing emergency vehicles, that he’d been in the middle of a con when this all went down. He emphasizes that the parties responsible are in government custody and that he and his team are all okay. 

There’s a long pause when he finishes. Jess, like the rest of his siblings, is under the impression that he works for a top-secret agency using his tech skills to take down bad guys, which, to be fair, is pretty close to the truth. It’s just a whole lot less legal than they believe. 

“You’re really okay? Physically, I mean?” she asks. There’s a little tremor in her voice. 

“I could run a marathon,” he claims. Eliot gives him a disbelieving glance at the same time as Jess scoffs. “Well, okay, I couldn’t,” he admits. “But I couldn’t yesterday either, so that’s nothing new.” He softens his tone. “I’m fine, Jess, I swear, I just…” He rubs absently at the scratch Leia left on his chest, at the rip in his shirt. Leia shrinks down. He looks at her helplessly. 

“I don’t expect you to be totally fine. It would be ridiculous to expect you to be unaffected by that, Alec, so don’t you go expecting that of yourself.” Jess sighs. “I know there’s a whole lot you ain’t telling me, Alec, but I hope you got someone you can talk to about all this. You shouldn’t have to keep it all bottled up. Doesn’t your agency have a therapist on staff or something? Seriously, you should, I’m sure you’re not the only one who needs it.”

Alec’s probably the member of the crew with the _least_ baggage, so Jess is... well, she’s not wrong, but Alec still stifles a giggle at the idea. “I’ll, uh, I’ll bring it up at our next staff meeting,” he lies, wondering whether Eliot or Nate would freak out more at the suggestion. Parker, of course, would be out the window before he could finish the sentence.

Jess clicks her tongue like she knows he’s lying his ass off. “You just be gentle with yourself, okay?” she tells him. “You got a friend who can stay over? You shouldn’t have to be alone after all that.” 

Alec glances over to where Eliot appears to be spooning cookie dough onto a baking tray, and thinks of Boudicca scoffing at the very idea of leaving him alone. “Yeah,” he says. “Got a friend here now.” 

“Good,” she says, satisfied. “Now, I want you to focus on things that make you feel safe, okay? Eat some comfort food, watch something you’ve seen before, stay in familiar places with people you trust. Spend some time grooming Leia before you go to bed. Don’t push yourself too fast. Take it slow. You’re gonna be alright, I know you will.”

“Thanks,” Alec says thickly. “And, um…”

She laughs. “I won’t tell Nana. You should call her soon, though.” 

“Thanks,” Alec repeats. 

They spend a few more minutes catching up. Jess has a new girlfriend, a florist with a rabbit daemon who has Jess’s Sam totally enraptured. Alec has seen enough youtube videos of dogs cuddling with bunnies to understand the appeal. Keisha and her girls are coming for a visit soon, and Jess has been in a panic toddler-proofing her apartment. Neither of them have spoken to Amber lately, but that’s not unusual, Amber often loses track of time between teaching and composing music. 

“If you had to guess, what do you think Julián is up to these days?” Jess asks, carefully casual. None of them are supposed to be in touch with him. He’d only been in the family a little over a year, before his bio-dad reclaimed him and moved them back to Texas. 

“Oh, I’d imagine he got a scholarship to go study plants or something,” Alec says. It’s subterranean fungal molds, actually, and Julián's working on a thesis along with his part-time job in a coffee shop. 

“Mm, that does sound nice,” Jess says. “Good theory.” She means _good job._ It’s an open secret in the family that there are no secrets from Alec. 

Eliot is pulling something out of the oven. “Thank you,” Alec says again.

“You take care now,” Jess says. “Talk to you later, Alec.” 

“You too.” 

Eliot has made mac and cheese for dinner. Not fancy, truffle-oil, rich white folk mac and cheese, or sneakily healthy cauliflower mac and cheese. Just creamy goodness. The rich salty flavor hits Alec’s tongue with all the satisfaction of the final kill shot on a level-breaking quest. 

Eliot scoops a second helping onto Alec’s plate. “So,” he says, “what is it, exactly, that your sister thinks you do?” 

Alec laughs, eats another spoonful of cheesy heaven, and begins to talk. 

After dinner, they settle on the couch to watch Avatar: The Last Airbender and eat fresh-baked orange sugar cookies, all buttery citrus that melts in Alec’s mouth. Eliot gripes a bit about watching a kid’s show but with Boudicca already curled up on the couch ready to watch, the grumbling is so obviously performative that Alec feels entirely free to disregard it. It takes less than three episodes for Eliot to be deeply invested in the characters and begin expounding about the real-life fighting traditions the different styles of bending are based off of. 

Alec falls asleep while Aang is busy completing Bumi’s challenges. He’s dimly aware of the episode ending, of Eliot’s hand on his elbow, of Boudicca gently carrying Leia in her mouth. He collapses into bed and is sound asleep before Eliot has left the room. 

He jolts awake with a scream sometime around three. He’s tangled in his sheets and it’s unbearable. He flings himself off the bed, tossing the crumpled sheets away from him. 

For a moment all he hears is his heartbeat, pounding unnaturally loud and fast, just like it had in the coffin. Then there’s a creak from the hall. He turns to see Eliot framed in the doorway. 

The hitter is careful not to intrude into Alec’s space without an invitation. “Nightmare?” he asks calmly. 

Alec’s still shaking. “It’s the sheets,” he says hoarsely. “I didn’t think…”

“They’re satin,” Leia explains from where she’s perching on the headboard. “We fell asleep so fast, we weren’t even thinking about it, but the coffin was…” she loses her words. Eliot seems to understand, though.

“Can I come in?” he asks. His posture is deliberately nonthreatening, but Alec would bet anything that he's got multiple weapons concealed on his person, just in case it had been something other than a nightmare.

Alec wonders for a moment what it says about his current lifestyle that he finds that deeply reassuring instead of creepy or alarming. Whatever. He nods permission. 

Eliot enters the room, Boudicca ghosting at his heels. With a few sharp movements, he’s removed the sheet from the bed and gathered up the top sheet from the floor. “You got any cotton sheets or something?” he asks, like it’s totally normal to be sitting on the floor in the middle of the night while your best friend unmakes your bed. 

“No,” Alec says numbly. “I got…” he buries his face in his hands. “This is so stupid,” he says, muffled.

“You can tell me if you want,” Eliot offers, dumping the pillows out of the pillowcases. There’s something about this dim light, the fragile intimacy of the witching hour, that makes it easier to talk. And, well, this is Eliot, who throws himself between Alec and danger on a regular basis. He thinks of Sophie and Parker talking about tearing down your walls to let people in. He finds he's willing to take that risk.

“When we were kids,” Alec begins, “there just wasn’t money for anything real nice, you know? Nana kept us warm, kept us fed, but our clothes mostly came from the discount racks at Value!More, and so did most other things.”

“Like sheets?”

Alec sighs. Leia squirms her way into his lap and he buries his hands in her thick fur. He hadn’t even noticed her moving.

“Like sheets,” he confirms. “I had these beat-up old blue sheets pretty much the whole time I lived with Nana. They were torn in places and kinda scratchy, and I used to lie in bed and promise myself that when I was rich, I’d buy fancy-ass satin sheets and sleep like a king. My first big score after I left Nana’s, that’s what I did. ” He rubs a hand across his eyes. “Some good that did me,” he adds bitterly. 

Eliot hesitates for a long moment. “You know,” he suggests cautiously, “there are plenty of fancy-ass sheets that ain’t satin. Egyptian cotton with a million thread count or something. You can still have nice things, even if you can’t have that specific nice thing right now.” He catches Alec’s dubious look and adds defensively, “What? I don’t got fancy sheets but plenty of people I’ve slept with do, I know things.”

“It’s not that,” Alec says. “It’s just… I kinda thought you’d think I was being ridiculous and prissy. You usually make fun of me for that kind of thing.” 

“Dammit, Hardison.” It’s so familiar that Alec relaxes immediately. “There’s a difference between being freaked out because you don’t want to get your hands dirty and avoiding triggers when you’ve just gone through hell.” He pauses. Boudicca gives him a look Alec can’t parse at all, but Eliot must understand, because he reluctantly adds, “And… I get fulfilling a promise to your past self, too, okay? That ain’t dumb.”

“You do?” It’s Leia who asks, her voice tremulous. 

Eliot looks startled to be addressed directly by the raccoon, but he answers roughly, “Yeah, Leia, I do.” He runs a hand through his hair and looks towards his own daemon. “It’s part of why I cook the way I do. I made a promise to myself, once, when I thought I wasn’t ever gonna have anything decent to eat ever again. I _can_ survive on nothing but MREs or protein bars, but unless I have to, I ain’t ever going to settle for something subpar.”

Alec blinks at the hitter and files that tidbit away to unpack more thoroughly. He's grateful to Eliot for returning the gesture, for letting himself be vulnerable too, but after the last day, Alec's operating at something like twelve percent capacity and he has no idea how to respond to those feelings. Instead, he says, “Eliot, I can assure you that there is absolutely nothing subpar about your cooking.”

Boudicca laughs in her dog-style, tongue lolling out, and some tension goes out of Eliot’s shoulders. He says, “Try and get some sleep, okay? You can go sheet shopping in the morning, it ain’t gonna hurt you to sleep without sheets for one night. Anyone tryin’ to get to you is gonna have to go through me and Bud to do that. We’ve got your back, Alec. You go to sleep.” 

Alec considers protesting, but Leia bats at his arm and sends him the memory of Jess saying _be gentle with yourself._ Instead, he says, “Thanks, man.”

Eliot offers him a hand up. For a moment, he flashes back to that afternoon, to Eliot pulling him out of the coffin. It’s a good memory this time, that moment of relief and security. He leans into Eliot’s touch, resting against his strong shoulders for a minute before allowing himself to be led back to bed. It reminds him of that moment in the bar with Parker, skin against skin, breathing the same air. 

Without the sheets, his mattress is scratchy. Leia curls up against him, the most adorable of little spoons, careful not to put any weight on him. 

“G’night,” Eliot says, turning to go. 

“Would you—” Leia begins, then stops. Alec’s already starting to snore.

“Yeah?” Boudicca asks, gentle. 

“Leave the door open?” Leia asks, her tail twitching.

“Of course,” Eliot agrees easily. 

Boudicca follows Eliot out of the room, leaving the door wide open behind them. The wolfdog looks back over her shoulder at the raccoon. “Sleep well,” she says. 

And this time, they do.

**Author's Note:**

> Hardison- Leia, a North American Raccoon. Raccoons are highly adaptable and intelligent. They have extremely dexterous paws, which Leia uses to type on a modified computer. She can also use a video game controller pretty effectively.
> 
> Eliot- Boudicca, a Wolfdog. A hybrid of a grey wolf and a Siberian husky, Bud is a powerful hunter with a strong pack instinct. Wolfdogs tend to be larger than wolves, and are often even dangerous to humans than wolves because they are less afraid of people. They are fiercely loyal and difficult to tame. A hybrid daemon indicates a dichotomy in spirit.
> 
> Sophie- Melpomene, a Northern Mockingbird. Mockingbirds are intelligent and capable of differentiating between individual humans, particularly recognizing people who have been intruders or threats in the past. They remember their breeding spots and return to areas where they had success in the past. And, of course, mockingbirds are known for their skilled mimicry of other birds.
> 
> Nate- Brigid, a Bloodhound. Bloodhounds have extraordinarily keen olfactory senses and a tenacious tracking instinct. They are used around the world for tracking missing people and criminals.
> 
> Parker- Also Parker, a Globe Skimmer Dragonfly. Dragonflies have extraordinary eyesight and are fast, agile, flyers and hunters. Globe skimmers have the largest range of any species of dragonfly, and have one of the farthest known migrations of any insect. They can fly for hours without perching, as well as flying higher than any other species of dragonfly. They are gold in color.
> 
> Jess- Samwise, a Labrador retriever. Labrador retrievers are one of the most popular dog breeds both as pets and as disability assistance dogs. They tend to be friendly, outgoing, and gentle, particularly with children.


End file.
